Council of Europe Committee of Ministers’ Deputies Revisit Pichugin Case, Call on Russian Federation to Provide Redress and Pichugin’s Release
December 10, 2019
During its 1362nd meeting held from December 3 to December 5, 2019, the Ministers’ Deputies of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers revisited the case of Alexey Pichugin, Russia’s longest-serving political prisoner.
Responding to application No. 46082/99 filed in the case of Klyakhin group v. Russian Federation regarding the Supervision of the execution of the European Court’s judgments, the deputies once more called on Russian authorities “to adopt the individual measures necessary to erase the consequences of the violations for the applicants, given that” (…) Mr Pichugin is serving a life sentence following trials in which the European Court found violations of Article 6 of the Convention.”
Deputies further:
“4. stressed, in particular, as regards the Pichugin case, that tangible redress for the applicant has become a matter of serious concern, the applicant having already served 16 years of the life sentence imposed notwithstanding violations of Article 6 established, without any convincing redress having been provided to date; called therefore on the Russian Federation to consider adopting measures as soon as possible to ensure his release and in this context noted anew the possibilities offered by a pardon;
5. decided to resume consideration of the Pichugin cases at the latest at their 1377th meeting (June 2020) (DH) and instructed the Secretariat to prepare a draft interim resolution if no tangible results have been achieved by then;
6. as regards the applicants who appeared from the Court’s judgments to be still in detention, invited the authorities to regularly provide information on whether any further extensions of detention on remand were based on relevant and sufficient reasons, additional to those found inadequate by the Court;
7. invited the authorities in this context, and in view of the Committee’s Recommendations Rec(2002)13 and CM/Rec(2019)5, to clarify how rapidly national judges deciding on detention are provided with translations, summaries or extracts of European Court judgments and whether the legal status of such translations allows them to be used in domestic proceedings without requiring any further certified translation from the parties;”
Mr. Pichugin was first arrested in 2003 and has been imprisoned ever since. Twice, the European Court of Human Rights has found that his trials violated his fundamental human rights and demanded a new and fair trial, which Russian authorities have refused to provide. The appointed rapporteur from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights in 2017 declared that Russia’s treatment of Mr. Pichugin was “tantamount to moral torture,” adding that “[t]here can be no place for such inhumanity in our community of law.”
For a chronology of Mr. Pichugin’s plight and more information on his case, click here and here. Official documents pertaining to the case can be viewed here.
Source: Council of Europe Committee of Ministers,1362nd meeting, 3-5 December 2019 (DH), H46-25 Klyakhin group v. Russian Federation (Application No. 46082/99). Full-text pdf available here.
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